Sidelights

New York City heart surgeon Mehmet Oz has become one of America's
best-known doctors thanks to his frequent media appearances and
best-selling book,
You: The Owner's Manual
. The 2005 tome, written with fellow physician Michael F. Roizen,
condenses the advice Oz has given to scores of patients over the course of
his career—that modern medicine can only do so much, and
one's health and well-being requires a share of self-motivation,
too. His longtime employer, Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, was the site
of former U.S. President Bill Clinton's quadruple bypass surgery in
2004, and Oz likes to point out that even a man as carefully monitored as
Clinton was not immune from danger. "He's as well tested as
you can be," Oz told
New York Times
journalist Dwight Garner. "You cannot test for safety.
You've got to live to be safe."

Oz was born in 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Turkish parents who were both
physicians. His father, Mustafa, rose to become chief of cardiothoracic
surgery at Wilmington Medical Center in Delaware, where Oz grew up; his
mother, Suna, would later head a family owned pharmaceutical company back
in Istanbul, Turkey's capital. The family made periodic visits to
relatives there, and on one such vacation, the nine-year-old Oz recalled
seeing a magazine photo-essay about the first 12 people who had received
heart transplants in the world, all of whom died. Reading about this
historic breakthrough in life-saving surgery, Oz decided then that he
wanted to become a heart surgeon, too.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1982, Oz entered the medical
school of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received both an M.D.
degree and an M.B.A. in 1986. During this period he met his future wife,
Lisa Lemole, whose father was a well-known Philadelphia heart doctor.
Gerald
Lemole was a pioneer in heart surgery and postoperative care, and
advocated a low-fat diet for his patients that was initially viewed with
derision by his colleagues years before it became a commonplace
prescription for healthy living. Dr. Lemole's ideas about diet,
exercise, and the importance of a positive mental attitude would serve as
a profound influence on his future son-in-law.

Some seven years of training in surgery and cardiothoracic medicine at
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City were necessary
before Oz became an attending surgeon at the same hospital in 1993. He
quickly established himself as a heart-transplant specialist, but also
excelled in other types of less invasive cardiac surgery. Along the way he
authored dozens of research articles for professional journals and
patented various devices and methods in the realm of cardiac care. But Oz
also realized that a patient's state of mind also played a large
role in a successful surgical outcome, and became interested in
alternative therapies, such as hands-on healing, guided imagery, and other
strategies based on ancient beliefs about the connection between the mind
and the body.

In 1995, Oz established the Cardiac Complementary Care Center at
Columbia-Presbyterian, and contacted other cardiac surgeons around the
country to ask if they would be interested in conducting studies that
tracked patients' outcomes when alternative treatment methods were
offered alongside standard medical remedies. It was a bold move, for such
options had failed to garner much professional enthusiasm among the
cardiac-care establishment, and were sometimes even vehemently resisted as
simply New Age quackery. "The most they could do is caution me in a
brotherly way," Oz said of the professional risk involved in his
mission when he spoke with
New York Times
writer Chip Brown. "I would say to them, 'I know you think
this is a little crazy, but I feel we are neglecting our patients in a
crucial way.'"

The success stories at Oz's Complementary Care Center were
recounted in his first book, 1998's
Healing from the Heart: A Leading Heart Surgeon Explores the Power of
Complementary Medicine
, which was co-authored by his wife, Lisa, and journalist Ron Arias. Three
years later, Oz became director of the Cardiovascular Institute at
Columbia-Presbyterian as well as vice chairman for the hospital's
cardiovascular services and a professor of surgery at the Columbia
University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He continued to
promote alternative therapies to heart surgery patients at the hospital
along with traditional care, and began to find a wider audience for his
message. Within a few years he became a regular guest on television-news
segments devoted to health issues, and fit in appearances on
Dateline NBC, Oprah Winfrey
, and CNN in between his busy schedule at Columbia-Presbyterian and the
medical school.

In 2003, Oz began hosting a program on cable's Discovery Channel
that was the brainchild of his wife. Called
Second Opinion with Dr. Oz
, the series featured celebrity guests discussing their own health issues,
such as Oprah Winfrey and her lifelong struggle to control her weight. The
show also featured graphic footage of surgeries over which Oz narrated, in
layperson's terms, just how harmful tobacco use or a poor diet
could prove to the human body. "We show real anatomy," he
told
People
writer Susan Horsburgh, "not to spook you but because
there's no better way to get you to realize what your body is
really all about."

Befitting his widespread appeal, Oz is a regular contributor to a pair of
magazines with a rather distinct readership,
Esquire
and the
Saturday Evening Post
. In 2005 his second book,
You: The Owner's Manual
, was published. In it, he and co-author Roizen dole out practical tips on
how to live a longer, healthier life, such as eliminating bleached-flour
products and sugary carbonated beverages from one's diet. Both the
hardcover and paperback versions of
You
spent much of 2005 and 2006 on the best-seller lists.

Oz's oldest daughter, Daphne, even wrote her own health-help guide
in 2006,
The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle
Plan That Really Works
. A Princeton undergraduate majoring in Near Eastern studies, Daphne had
been raised in an intensely health-conscious household, but in the book
confessed her own struggles in learning how to eat wisely. As for his own
health, Oz confessed in an interview that appeared in
Organic Style
that his busy work schedule was his own scandalously unhealthy secret.
"I usually fall asleep in ten seconds, which isn't
good," he said. "It means I'm exhausted."

User Contributions:

Unfortunately geography in US schools is not important .took me 25 years to meet a person who knew the capital of Mongolia ,he was Mongolian Ulaan batur .I took international geography for the merchant marine academy long time agon,I still remember 99/100 Ankara is there for thousands of years I Blaim the system .

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